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Tough and Transparent Supramolecular Cross-Linked Co-Assembled Silk Fibroin Films for Passive Radiative Cooling

8 Aug 2024

Research

Prof. Xungai Wang, Member of the Research Centre of Textiles for Future Fashion, collaborated with other researchers and published an article entitled “Tough and Transparent Supramolecular Cross-Linked Co-Assembled Silk Fibroin Films for Passive Radiative Cooling” in Advanced Functional Materials.

 

ABSTRACT

Silk fibroin (SF) is a natural biomaterial from silk, which has outstanding biocompatibility. However, regeneration SF materials usually suffer from brittleness, which restricts their applications. Here, a novel supramolecular co-assembly strategy is reported for the preparation of a Bolas-shaped polyethylene glycol peptide (BPP)/SF film, where the peptide and SF form a robust payload co-assembled network and polyethylene glycol (PEG) fragments form supramolecular cross-linking in this network. The obtained BPP/SF film shows both high stress (27.8 MPa), high toughness (3.64 MJ m−3), high transparency (89%), and high mid-infrared (MIR) emissivity (90.5%). In passive radiative cooling, the BPP/SF film results in a 2.7 °C reduction in the temperature of the human arm skin and a 14.6 °C reduction in the temperature of the solar cell. More importantly, this novel BPP co-assembly SF material can be recycled and reused while maintaining its original mechanical strength. This work provides a novel strategy for fabricating regenerative SF materials with ultra-strong and ultra-tough mechanical performance.

 

Read the full article in Nature Communications. URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202406920



Research Units PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research | Research Centre of Textiles for Future Fashion

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